Every year the local arts council (Arts Council Windsor and Region http://www.mnsi.net/~acwr/) hosts a charity fund raiser event called Chair-ity in which local artist submit works for the home all following a theme. It\'s called Chair-ity as originally all that was to be submitted were chairs.
All of the submitted works are then put up for auction. Small items by silent auction and large items by the usual bidding format. There is always entertainment provided as well, the majority of which is the auctioneer who is always dressed up and played in character in tune with the theme.
This years event was Once upon a Chair and featured Fairy Tale Themes. The Auctioneer was the Big bad Wolf, and all submitted items had themes like Cinderella, Fairies, Rapunzel etc.
What does all this have to do with the op, I\'m getting there.
So at this years event there was a brewery full of people (Walkerville brewery hosted the event this year) bidding on this and that. It was a little too hot and not that comfortable and most items were going for the initial bid. Then this one chair came up. It was a rapunzel piece. It had a rendition of rapunzel on the back with her hair going down the back of the chair, twisting through all the back posts, around the arms and eventually down the legs. It was a great piece for the theme, but not something I was interested in.
There were two women in the crowd though that went nuts over the item. The were both dressed to the nines and probably belonged to the Windsor elite (of which I know pretty much nothing). They bid back and forth fuiously on this chair, with the price ending at something like $180 dollars. The woman who won beaming with pride at her newly one local art.
Then the big bad wolf (remember, the acutioneer) asked the Artist to stand up as this action beat the Humpty Hump (highest auction price so far that day). The artist was a 6-8 year old little girl.
Everyone applauded, everyone except the woman that just spent $180 on the chair. You had to see her face. You could just watch her break, like a mirror shattering in slow motion. I thought she was going to scream out or cry. Instead she just walked up to the cash, paid and noted she would pick up her art later and walked out. I took a quick glance at the other woman who was outbid and saw the bigest smile I had ever seen on her face and she was clapping like mad.
I have to admit I laughed out loud at that point. It was at a brewery though, so I think I can be forgiven.
